Ex-deputy will get 18 years after detainees drown in locked van

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- A deputy in South Carolina whose police van was swept away by floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two girls in search of psychological well being remedy trapped in a cage in the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

A Marion County jury discovered former Horry County deputy Stephen Flood guilty of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless murder.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, but their households stated they were not violent. Newton was only in search of medicine for her fear and anxiousness and Inexperienced’s family said she was committed to a mental facility at a regular mental health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the verdict and after a number of kinfolk of the women stated his decision to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson advised the decide. “He abused the trust my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To avoid wasting time.”

Circuit Court Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter charge and four years on every reckless homicide charge and ordered the sentences served back-to-back.

The floodwaters swept the police van off its wheels in September 2018 and pinned it in opposition to a guardrail, preventing the women from being able to get out the sliding door they used to enter the van. Flood and a deputy with him didn't have a key to a second door and there was no emergency escape hatch, in response to testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the women and tried to keep them calm for about an hour as the water saved rising before it obtained too dangerous and rescuers may no longer hear them.

“How awful should which have been to take a seat there and wait to your personal dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

While different factors like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements mentioned the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless resolution to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by means of water.

National guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Highway 76 simply exterior Nichols, however Flood drove around them after briefly talking to the troopers.

Clements read from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was in the water, he could not turn round as a result of he might now not see the sting of the freeway and was nervous about operating right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Maybe it wounded his pleasure or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead into water that was not just standing in a tall puddle, but it surely was dashing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements said.

Flood's lawyer said whereas it was a horrible tragedy, others have been attempting to unfairly blame just the former deputy as an alternative of the equipment problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was beginning and despatched him even though taking the women to the psychological well being services was not an emergency.

"I ask that you resist the urge to attempt to give justice to these two women by giving injustice to this good man," defense lawyer Jarrett Bouchette mentioned. “They want to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, but before he was sentenced informed the choose he tried all the pieces he might to keep the women calm as the waters rose and help was sluggish to reach.

“It was a series of mistakes on my half and different those that led me to that point and I’m sorry for what occurred to the ladies,” Flood stated.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been finally rescued from the highest of the transport van, authorities stated. Bishop will stand trial for two counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, but it surely still would not open. The delay in getting help was pricey too. A firefighter testified they have been capable of reduce the roof off the van and started working on the cage, but the water obtained larger and faster and it was too dangerous to proceed.

Newton's son Charles mentioned he hated that Flood needed to be taught to comply with the principles and use frequent sense at such a steep worth.

“I can forgive, however I can't forget. Fortuitously, I nonetheless bear in mind my mom as a contented woman, a joyful woman who cherished her household," he stated. “But you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by hearing her screams behind that van."

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Comply with Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.